Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Hate is alright.
Assault is almost alright.
Rape is not so alright in some cases, but alright in many cases.
Killing is alright in many cases too. For example, the state can kill in the name of capital punishment, you can kill people as much as you want during the war, you can kill a passerby if you feel you would get attacked by him.
But
Love is not alright.
You can be jailed for love in a country called Bangladesh.

A 22-year-old Muslim woman in Bangladesh has been arrested and charged with kidnapping after she eloped with and married a Hindu teenage girl in what could be the first reported same-sex marriage in the conservative country that bans homosexuality.

Police arrested Sanjida Akter and her 16-year-old girlfriend in Dhaka on July 23 after the minor’s father registered a complaint, saying his daughter had been abducted.

Abduction charge? Then the girl who abducted the other girl should be arrested, why the girl who was abducted was arrested? Old men forcefully marry girl children everyday in the rural areas. I have never heard any man gets arrested for their crimes to marry minors. Now, a couple who love each other and start living together arrested. I doubt whether the younger girl is really 16. It can be a made up age to make the arrest easier. We live in a violent world, where love and love making are often considered crimes.

“We detained them in a house they rented and were stunned to discover this is a lesbian case,” Lieutenant Sazzad Raihan, an officer.

“Both told us that they love each other. They fled their homes in Pirojpur district to start a family in Dhaka. (The younger girl) told us that they were married under Hindu traditions at their home the previous night.”

Homosexuality and same-sex marriages are illegal in the majority Muslim south Asian nation and people who are open about their sexuality often face discrimination and violence. This may be the first known case of a same-sex marriage in Bangladesh, although the wedding was not performed by a cleric, priest or magistrate.

Homosexuality is illegal in Muslim countries. But homosexuality is legal in Muslim heaven. Beautiful young boys are kept in heaven to serve men wine and sex. Muslim countries are terribly hypocrite to ban alcohol and homosexual Love. Alcohol is not really banned in Bangladesh. People drink alcohol as much as they want. Male homosexuals are roaming around the cities, they don’t get often punished for being homosexuals. But girls get punished for being homosexuals only because they are girls, I don’t think they are punished because one of the married girls is a minor. The court would not recognize their marriage anyway. They only exchanged the garlands of flowers to be married.

Why so much anger against girls? Is it because they have denied to marry men and denied to be humiliated, abused and raped by men and denied to be treated like child bearing machines and slaves by men? The loving girls did not kill or harm anyone. Their only crime is they kick the ass of male dominated patriarchal system. Right, officers?

“A jinn (evil spirit) has possessed her since she was a student in class four [9 years old] and we tried many ways to free her from it. This is what’s provoking her into this behaviour,” Abdus Sobhan, Sanjida’s father said.

“No one will ever lodge any complaint against me. Not even [this girl] as I did not abduct her. She went with me willingly,” she told the newspaper before going to jail.

Finally! Women love women, so women must be possessed by evil spirits. Now beat her up until jinns leave her body. What a wonderful solution for the same-sex-love!
Patriarchy, religion, misogyny, ignorance, barbarism all walk hand in hand to destroy women whoever dare to enjoy the rights they deserve.

I hope you’ll take a moment to watch the conversation, consider it, and weigh in yourself on behalf of marriage equality.

I’ve always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.

But over the course of several years I’ve talked to friends and family about this. I’ve thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, I’ve gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.

What I’ve come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens.

Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn’t dawn on them that their friends’ parents should be treated differently.

So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.